QUARTERLY CONNECTION #3

THE ART OF SELF-LEADERSHIP, PART 2

“No one need aspire to leadership in the work of God who is not prepared to pay a price greater than his contemporaries and colleagues are ready to pay. True leadership always exacts a heavy toll on the whole man, and the more effective the leadership is, the higher the price to be paid.”[1]

—J. Oswald Sanders

Personal leadership is the foundation on which productive leadership is built.

The stronger the foundation the more effective our leadership.

It is personal leadership that helps us not to burn out or blow out.

  • Burn out: using more fuel than we are acquiring or consuming.
  • Blow out: discovering limitations or weak areas in our lives that limit the extent or effectiveness of our ministry journey.

(Sometimes people self-sabotage on purpose to cause a blow-out rather than stand up to the pressures of leadership.)

The Seven Deadly Siphons

Gordon MacDonald serves as chancellor of Denver Seminary. He has also been president of InterVarsity and, for most of his career, a pastor. In 1987, while serving as a pastor, his moral failure came to light. After publicly confessing, he went through a restoration process and returned to pastoring in 1993.

Among his books are Ordering Your Private World and Rebuilding Your Broken World.

His article, “The Seven Deadly Siphons,”[2] identifies seven things that siphon off a leader’s spiritual passion:

  1. Words without action: talking a good spirituality without living it out
  1. Busyness without purpose: trying to look active or productive with little end result
  1. Calendars without a Sabbath: keeping a stacked-up calendar with no time set aside for quiet and reflection
  1. Relationships without mutual nourishment: being acquainted with many but intimate with no one
  1. Pastoral personality without self-examination: healing others without genuine self-evaluation
  1. Natural giftedness without spiritual power: working on your own strength, which will eventually catch up to you as you run out of spiritual power
  1. An enormous theology without an adequate spirituality: holding a grand view of God but having limited intimacy with God (a temptation that fits Reformed circles)

All of these things siphon off our spiritual passion. They weaken our personal leadership (the way we leading ourselves) and weaken the foundation out of which we lead in ministry.

One of the issues in the sinking of the Titanic was that the rudder was not large enough. How do we ensure that we have a rudder that is large enough—one that goes deep enough to help us change and then maintain our leadership course?

Sharing

  • How has your personal leadership—the way you lead yourself—changed since you entered ministry/seminary?
  • How has it changed in the past year?

[1] J. Oswald Sanders, Spiritual Leadership: Principles of Excellence for Every Believer (Chicago: Moody Press, 1967), 169.

[2] Gordon MacDonald, “The Seven Deadly Siphons,” Leadership Journal, Winter 1998,